we love to disappoint ourselves

blear: dim dull or filmy

[kosmogrl]

[soleilinfini]

mary oliver, staying alive

[sevaria]

Make me the subject of your desire

[heavensghost]

Juliette Drouet,

[louisegluckpdf]

holy quaternity

[sunsplitlover]

[petaltexturedskies]

Sara Teasdale, from "The Crystal Gazer" in Dark of the Moon

[weltenwellen]

Chen Chen, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency

[beguines]

[singing-bowl]

2026

CREATE THE WORLD YOU WANT TO LIVE IN, NO MATTER HOW SMALL

READ VORACIOUSLY, WIDELY, DEEPLY, FOR FUN

WRITE DOWN YOUR THOUGHTS, PEN ON PAPER, WORDS AND IMAGES

STOP BUYING SHIT YOU DON'T NEED

MOVE YOUR BODY IN NEW AND EXCITING WAYS

DANCE AND SING LIKE IT MIGHT SAVE YOU, BECAUSE IT MIGHT

THERE ARE TIMES FOR SOLEMN CONTEMPLATION AND THERE ARE TIMES FOR MINDLESS ACTION, LEARN THE DIFFERENCE

DON'T BE AFRAID OF LOVING—EVERYTHING IS A PART OF THE WORLD

[weltenwellen]

To Be Alive Gregory Orr

[koolthing0]

[weltenwellen]

Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver

[mesogeios]

Can you recommend some essays about speech or language?

Here are a few essays and articles about language use (off the top of my head). I hope that you enjoy them as much as I do!

How Words Fail by Cathy Park Hong

Politics and the English Language by George Orwell

Of Strangeness That Wakes Us by Ilya Kaminsky

The Meanings of a Word by Gloria Naylor

Mother Tongue by Yoojin Grace Wuertz

Borrowing a Simile by Walt Whitman

Word Order by Lewis H. Lapham

Four Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin

Nature: Chapter IV Language by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Strange Persistence of First Languages by Julie Sedivy

What Do You Lose When You Lose Your Language? by Joshua Fishman

[weltenwellen]

Leila Chatti, "Postcard from Gone"

[weltenwellen]

An Interview with Richard Siken

[geryone]

The Fireman's Daughter, Jonathan Kinsman